User Interface (UI) Problems

General Discussion
1

As a designer, I feel as if I am somewhat qualified to speak on this. I have explored the game and its menus thoroughly and thought hard on the small issues I have with the structure.

  1. Main Menu - This was essentially pulled straight from OW1 which is fine. However, we no longer have a way, in the main menu, to view news and update information. Also, the “Heroes” selection brings you to a “Hero Gallery” one of their names should change.

  2. Hero Gallery Page - The hero cards are all over the place in regards to justification. The last line of cards for each role should all justify one way. As it stands, Zarya is right justified, Widow is centered, and Moira/Zen are left justified.

  3. Menu - Firstly, this shows the OW1 logo. Not sure if it is intentional, but it seems like a messy branding problem. (This is noticed in a lot of places, even the credits) Secondly, within the menu options, “challenges” is bright orange. This appears to the user as a selected or hovered option, as there is only a scale change when hovering through the items. On console it is difficult to know what list item you are selecting.

  4. Shop Page - This is present on console, not sure about PC. The left-side options that jump you to different sections within the tab are totally unnecessary. Unless there are 5+ different sections to scroll through, it serves no purpose but to eliminate horizontal space.

  5. Battle Pass Page - The left-side options do feel a bit clunky and inconsistent with pages like the Shop. This could be split into tabs and feel more fleshed out. Also, the same hover problem as the main menu. It always feels like “buy tiers” is the selected/hovered option.

  6. Career Profile - On console, this is terribly hard to navigate. The hover is not obvious enough to the user, and they will quickly lose their place when navigating. It is borderline unusable without a mouse.

  7. Play - Unranked - Like the other game types (Push Maps in Arcade, or Role Queue in Competitive) an “Info” option should exist to explain the game type. If not for consistancy’s sake, new players may not know the details of Mystery Heroes.

  8. Hero Select Screen - The input label to change a hero’s skin should be on/near the dropdown. (On Console)

That’s all for now. Anyone else have opinions on the UI?

3 Likes
2

In general I think it’s a downgrade.

I play on console and I don’t like how they removed ‘Options’ from the main selection list. Without booting up the game to double check, just know it feels less intuitive.

Do not like how they buried Replays in the Career Profile menu. I know it was always under there but now you have to navigate it with the triggers from one page/tab instead of it having its own.

If you watch a Replay and then leave, it boots you to the main Career Profile page so you have to re-navigate to the Replay menu.

I can ‘Pin’ Replays, but the ability to ‘Unpin’ isn’t there anymore. Really annoying as someone that did enjoy keeping and viewing Replays. I saved 10 from my first session days ago and they’re still there.

Navigating menus in general on console feels bad. When I get to the end of a list of selections, I either can’t cycle back to the top by hitting down on the stick once more, or it takes slapping it multiple times. Just feels clunky and unfinished.

Also cannot access Replay list while in a game/queuing. Perhaps a niche problem but I liked to pull it up between games to see how my recent Win/Loss ratio has been going. Not a huge deal when I play alone because I can just leave queue to look. But I play grouped a lot and I’m not going to have us constantly leaving queue for that. Just yet another functionality OW1 had that is not present in OW2.

I’m sure there’s many other things like these but that’s all I have really noticed besides general feelings of UI being a downgrade or harder to quickly pull info from.

3

It does really feel like a downgrade. Not as polished or fully UX tested. I havent taken the time to do a deep analysis but I do agree with the points you’ve outlined.

4

For one thing, there are misaligned graphics everywhere, and I can’t believe people aren’t talking about it. The screen before competitive matches is laughably bugged, with the red team completely misaligned and player icons awkwardly cropped for some reason. This kind of stuff is everywhere. Anywhere two boxes sit next to each other, they are not aligned.